Armando Hart is the former minister of culture of Cuba. Our translation largely
relies on a CubaNews translation by Ana Portela.

These thoughts are intended as a tribute to all revolutionaries,
without exception, who suffered the great historical drama of seeing the
socialist ideas of October 1917 frustrated. We write this with admiration
and respect for the Russian people, who were the protagonists of the first
socialist revolution in history and who defeated fascism decades later
under the leadership of Stalin. The same Russian people, 130 years before,
defeated the military offensive of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Fundamentally, I have the experience of fifty years of working for
socialist ideas in the beautiful trenches of the Fidel and Martí-inspired
Cuban Revolution, that is to say, the first revolution of Marxist orientation
that triumphed in what has become known as the West.

One hundred years ago this month, the first proletarian revolution in
the new imperialist epoch of capitalism began. This revolution, the first
Russian revolution, was born of mass discontent aggravated by a deeply
unpopular war, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. It began with a wave of
strikes, riots and street demonstrations protesting the police shooting
on a peaceful mass workers' demonstration in St Petersburg, the capital
of the vast Russian Empire, on Sunday, January 22, 1905 (January 9 in
the Julian calendar still in use in Russia at the time), killing 1000
and wounding 2000 of the 200,000 marchers.